remember the day we dreamed - matthias, open

"So i'm tired of all the pain" 'Of the misery inside' "And I wish that I could live" Feeling nothing but the night Sakura No action. Lately her success in even finding a gym battle to fight was not so good. It was probably due to the verging civil war being the main cause of everyone's anxiety. Gathering all the gym badges and challenging the Pokemon league wasn't nearly as popular a job as it had been around ten years ago. She remembered how she used to dream all the time, as a child, of becoming an awesome, powerful pokemon trainer. There wasn't enough time these days to dream about that, but her desire remained to follow her dream. Shizuka, with her partner, Neji, the charizard, could easily travel almost anywhere in Lyeant. It really cut back on what would have been a few long, scenic walks with wild pokemon to battle, but it was difficult to compare any of that to flying on a charizard and choose the walking option. In the sky, she naturally felt free. She also felt strong, in a sense. Maybe a better way to describe it was that when she was with Neji, she felt powerful and strong too. But it was kind of typical. Owning a charizard always made anyone's ego swell up with pride. Here was Irisia. Last she heard, the Irisia gym leader was actively running her gym, but that was maybe... almost a year or two ago. Since then, a lot had changed, but today she came to this city on the hope that some things might have stayed the same. She flew into the land around the entrance. She was aware that this city was submerged underwater, and hadn't actually come here before to find out how one would enter the city. She just imagined that maybe there was a path or opening somewhere that led underneath the water. But of course, her and Neji being fire types, they weren't as eager to go into a place where they would be surrounded on all four sides with multiple tons of seawater. As nervous as she was to have to endure something like that, and battle under those conditions as well, Shizuka was also thrilled and excited to experience being in a city under water. They would get to view lots of under sea pokemon that Shizuka would never dive down into the ocean to see on her own. She had only seen the tops of Wailords when she and Neji crossed over the ocean by air, and Gyrados weren't as common as you thought until you found yourself surrounded by them out at sea in your tiny fishing boat. She hoped to see a lot of sea pokemon from behind the safety of thick glass that she would never dare approach in person, such as Tentacruel, Alomola, Mantine, Sharpedo, and Gyrados. But as high as her expectations were, she was also able to accept that she might end up just not seeing anything super special for whatever reason of fate. The trainer and pokemon landed at the entrance to the city. At first it seemed like there actually was a little bit of town life and buildings above the water, but she couldn't miss the presence of tubes and tunnels leading down into the floor below, where the majority of the city was built. Unsure whether to just go straight into the tunnels or wait for no reason she could come up with, Shizuka hesitated in her decision. Seeing as they were on land now, her pokeball popped open and Sakura, her meowth appeared and promptly hopped up onto her shoulder. The meowth wasn't too fond of being outside of her pokeball when they were flying. "<Shall we go in, then?>" Neji suggested, his voice sounding to the normal citizen as a simple, communicative growl. "M...maybe. Uh..." The vulpix gijinka who covered her gijinka identity under her hat and the coattails of her outfit, lacked the initiative. o o c || I'm not planning on having her actually succeed in challenging the gym. Just setting the stage for her to meet new people at the entrance ^^ w o r d s || 640 t a g s || Matthias Hunt